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The Rock Paper Synapse Show Thread

OK, so I plan to offer coverage of the next season of the Rock Paper Synapse League. There's a preview of the sort of thing to expect here (although future episodes will have less tactical waffling and get through the matches quicker):

The coverage of next season will improve on this in several ways, among them: quicker, snappier match coverage, improved graphics, continuous updates throughout the series, group tables, etc. (See what I've done previously in this vein here - the finals are by far the most polished)

Several people expressed an interest in helping out with the next series. Here's what you could do if you want to help:

Graphics work - a Rock Paper Synapse logo would be great. Some pretty layout for the tables would be nice as well, as would an image (or looping animation) to be used as a background for introduction/outro elements. (1280x720)

Music - I'm happy enough to carry on using whatever I can find from the internet - however if anyone wants to create some original, suitable music and give the rights to use it, that would be amazing.

Commentary - Other people have expressed an interest in doing the commentary work as well, that's great. I have an envisaged format to be used for that, and I'd like to do something where more people commentate.

So, if people would like to commentate, here's what I suggest:

When a match is posted on the main league thread as being resolved, it's open for claiming.

If you want to commentate it, announce your intention to commentate it then immediately begin recording your commentary.

Send the commentary privately to me (probably using some kind of one-click hosting service

What requirements do I have for the commentary:

If video, it should be 30 FPS and recorded at 1280x1024, with the action positioned so that when cropped to 720 high, all the battlefield can be seen, but none of the peripheral GUI stuff.

Clear spoken english. Having an accent is fine, but non-native speakers should be able to follow you. Having lots of static or other elements detracting from audio quality isn't OK however.

Try and keep it shorter than 2 minutes. For two-turn matches, shorter still, eight turn epics can overrun a little.

Record the game sound, but no game music.

Commentary can either be part of the video, or a separate audio file.

If you think the match is exceptional in some way, flag it up - we might want to make it the "featured" match.

The format for the show I'd like to do is this - a new show every 5 completed matches (total show 12-13 minutes long). 4 standard matches, one commentator, <2 minutes long. One featured match, with myself and at least one other discussing the tactics involved. For those who would like to do the joint commentary for the featured match - you need Teamspeak 3 (free download) and to be available sometime between 09:00-00:00 GMT.

This sounds excellent. My current intention for season 6 (barring a last-minute surge) is to have five divisions of six players each, which makes 75 games in total. 75 games = 15 shows = 3 hours of commentary. I've no idea about such things but that sounds like a lot of talking for one person - who'd like to lend a hand?

What do you guys use to record the show?
I wouldn't mind giving some commentary a shot, but I'm not sure how to go about recording in the first place (I tried using Jing, but it has a terrible framerate).

About recording:
I use FRAPS, which I've had a version of for a while. I dug through my sound settings in windows to enable Stereo mix, which is the audio source I record (this way I can get microphone input, through "listen to this source" and the game sound together). There are other tools out there too like gamecam and the like (and did I see someone saying that Evolve doohicky . Alternatively, you could just record the audio using your sound recording tool of choice, and sent that over to me and I can make the video, although I'll need some kind of cue (either timings or an audio cue) for when to play each turn. The video recordings are performed at 1280x1024 - they're then cropped to 1280x720 when I do the editing to just feature the game play and not all the GUI elements.

Oh, and as of the time of this post, I'm up to date with the latest (6th in total) match having been recorded.

I'm recording 444083 now (me vs ColOfNature).
Just trying a few things out (and trying not to say "ah/um" constantly)
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OK, you should be able to get it here: http://www.screencast.com/t/GW4odg7kxLl
The quality is lower than it should be, I didn't realise the setting was so low when I recorded it. It's not super-bad, but I can re-record if you'd like.

I'm using CamStudio (fraps free has a 30s limit, and I don't really want to pay for it now), however I didn't capture any game audio, sorry.

I'm curious if you guys are recording sound directly from the game or via the microphone during commentary.

I'm trying to setup MSI Afterburner but I can either capture game sound directly with no mic input or via the speakers with the mic on but at a lower sound quality (background noise of mouse and case fans).